


3 Times Clarke Let Bellamy Live, and 1 Time She Didn’t.

by ashyjade136



Category: The 100 (TV), The 100 (TV) RPF
Genre: Canon-Compliant, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-12
Updated: 2020-09-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26424853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashyjade136/pseuds/ashyjade136
Summary: I kill him or let him open that door and possibly doom us all. This is a choice, Clarke thinks. And then; no it isn’t.Her hand drops. She sobs. There is no choice, because killing Bellamy is not an option.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	3 Times Clarke Let Bellamy Live, and 1 Time She Didn’t.

**i.**

He’s fast asleep.

Night is heavy and mournful in the dropship, quiet as can be. The camp outside is fragile and constantly on the brink of collapse. Bellamy does nothing to help this; he worsens it. Strong and loud and oh-so-chaotic. Clarke hates his chaos.

But now he’s asleep and he looks…vulnerable. He is vulnerable. She clutches the makeshift knife in her hand, the one she was using to cut up fabric for tents, until her knuckles go white.

He is going to ruin them. Get them all killed with his reckless chants of ‘whatever the hell we want’.

Clarke wants nothing more than to stop that from happening. She likes order and rules, likes things being packaged up and organised. Bellamy comes along and throws out every rule in existence and scribbles in his own. It’s dangerous, his heartfelt abandon.

She steps toward him, till the edge of her boots nearly touch his thigh. His head is lolled back, his throat exposed.

She shifts the knife to her other hand.

She could kill him. Could slit his neck, just in the right spot to make it quiet and relatively painless. It would be easy, what with him so defenceless. She crouches slowly, till she’s eye level with his face. The curve of his jaw, his parted lips, the way his broad chest rises steadily; it is all so enticing. She knows why they listen to him. He’s older and enigmatic and charming. Inspiring.

  
Clarke is none of those things.

And, as she looks at him, at the slight twitches of his face as he dreams, she realises she’s not a killer either.

She straightens back up and, careful not to wake him, walks out of the dropship.

**ii.**

“Please.”

Clarke is willing to beg, to plead if that’s what it takes. Her hand shakes, the gun shaking with it. There is fear in Bellamy’s eyes and she hates that she’s the one to put it there.

“You’re going to have to make it a kill shot,” he says and her chest nearly collapses. “It’s the only way you’re going to stop me.”

The last time she contemplated killing him, she stopped herself because she didn’t believe she was a murderer. Now, she knows better. She has killed time and time again. Men, women, children. What is one more notch on her belt?

Her eyes dart to the hatch out of the bunker, the one he’s trying to open. She can’t let him do it. It’s too dangerous, too selfish. It puts the whole of humanity at risk.

But what is humanity, without love? And god she loves him. Her co-captain, her protector. He saves her, again and again, and now the world asks her to…what? Put a bullet in him and walk away?

They look at each other, in that way that they do. Where words are meaningless compared to the depth in their eyes.

_I kill him or let him open that door and possibly doom us all. This is a choice,_ Clarke thinks. And then; _no it isn’t._

Her hand drops. She sobs. There is no choice, because killing Bellamy is not an option.

**iii.**

Betrayal is always painful, but this time it’s catastrophic. Not necessarily because of what was done, but rather because of _who_ it was done by.

Bellamy betrayed Clarke and put the flame in Maddi’s head. Even after he promised to protect her, promised to always be on Clarke’s side—

She feels sick. Sick with hurt, with the disloyalty of it all. So angry that she can’t even begin to see reason and try to understand where he is coming from.

Maddi is her child, her everything. Bellamy knows that and still, he put her in danger.

Clarke rushes in, armed guards surrounding her and then screeches to a halt. Maddi is unconscious, lying on a table. _Oh god_.

Her eyes move to Bellamy. In that moment, she hates him. She hates everything he has done to her; not just this. She hates that he left her behind, she hates the six years she spent radioing him every day in the hopes that he was somehow still alive, she hates that he never heard a word of it, never heard her quiet confessions late at night when Maddi was asleep and she missed him so much her chest ached.

She hates him.

But she can’t bring herself to say that. Words never work that well for them anyway. Instead, she hits him and hopes that it conveys every inch of pain she is feeling.

There is power there, in knowing that he will never hit her back, will never raise a hand against her. And there is weakness too, in knowing that if he were anyone else, any other breathing person on the planet, he would not get slapped; he would be dead. If anyone were to threaten Maddi or harm her, Clarke would not hesitate to kill them, by any means necessary. She doesn’t care if she has to soak her hands in blood to do it; Maddi will come to no harm.

But Bellamy…

She can’t. She watches one of Octavia’s men pick Maddi up and follows behind, eyes pinned to Bellamy as she goes. Perhaps Octavia will kill him. Perhaps he will be forced to fight in that disgusting pit and perhaps he will die.

Perhaps that will be the end of the great Bellamy Blake. Or perhaps not. Clarke doesn’t know if he will die, but she does know that she can’t be the one to kill him.

**iv.**

Green light from the portal bathes them in a soft glow. Desperation isn’t a good look on Clarke. When Clarke gets desperate, people die.

One is already dead, strewn at her feet, his blood pooling around him. A disciple, a follower of Cadogan.

Killing him’s easy. Clarke barely thinks about it, barely blinks. She doesn’t know him and killing a stranger is simple.

But then, in a split second decision, she turns the gun on Bellamy. And now it isn’t a stranger. Now, it’s her best friend. It’s her partner, her right-hand man. It’s her person.

But he isn’t her person really, is he? He’s a hollowed out shell of the steadfast man he once was.

Bellamy-but-not-Bellamy freezes. His face sinks.

“Don’t make me do this,” her voice cracks. She will take any out, any possible solution that lets them both walk away from this.

“You’re not going to shoot me, Clarke,” he says softly, eyes wide and glassy. Once upon a time, he would’ve been right. “The bridge will close. You should go.”

She can’t. Not without the book. Not without knowing for certain that Maddi is safe. “Look at yourself,” he says, but how can she? He is supposed to be her heart, her moral compass. Without him by her side, she struggles desperately to find True North. What way is right and what way is wrong?

“What you feel, right now. The need to protect someone you love so badly you’re willing to kill your closest friend, someone you trust, who’s telling you that the fate of the entire human race is at stake.”

Clarke is sick of having the responsibility of the human race rest on her shoulders. Tears stream freely down her cheeks, flushed and sweaty. She is responsible for one, small human. An innocent human.

Clarke is sick of impossible choices.

“All that suffering can end,” he says and she is reminded of Allie. Of a similar spiel with a tragic outcome. “Madi’s suffering too.”

Her breathing calms, her shaking stops. A tear gets caught in the crook of her nose. There is no choice. Because Clarke cannot kill Bellamy, but this is not Bellamy.

Bellamy is dead. Clarke grieved him and accepted it and any hope to the contrary has been painfully false. He died, weeks ago, as he always should have; defending those he loved, fighting for his sister.

“This is how we do better,” he says.

_No,_ Clarke thinks, _this is how it ends._

“I’m sorry.” He means it, she can tell he does.

“Me too.” She means it too, and she remembers, in vivid technicolour, the man he once was. Brazen and lively, passionate and protective. She remembers all of it, every moment. And she pulls the trigger anyway.

It’s a clean shot. Isn’t it ironic that it was Bellamy who once taught her to shoot? His hands on her waist, his breath on her neck. Children playing with toys, now adults playing god.

He drops, crimson red painting his white clothes artfully.

And though it is his heart that the bullet strikes, it may as well be hers. Because in that moment, Clarke Griffin’s heart ceases to beat.

The portal closes just as she runs through. She leaves his lifeless body behind, stained with blood that similarly stains her hands.

And Clarke knows that this time, it will not wash off.

**Author's Note:**

> My heart is broken. I love these two so much. Also I cried writing this, so I wanted to make some of you cry as well. Can't wait to read much better versions of their ending via Fanfiction.


End file.
